To realise I've been entitled and ignorant Re: maternity leave

[AliceScarlett]

I've had this idea in my mind that when I eventually went on maternity leave that DH and I would have less money (obviously), but that it would be OK overall. "Everyone" appears to have children and they manage it! But I worked it out roughly last night after DH and I decided we will start TTC early 2016 and I'm shocked....and annoyed with myself that I'm shocked.

I just assumed that as our household income is about 40k a year and I work for the NHS (which I've heard has good maternity pay) I'd be able to have about a year off...feel silly now. After the first few weeks of 90% pay I'll lose about 1000 a month after tax....I'm the highest earner by quite a long way, how does this even work?

I don't understand how other people manage and I'm SO cross with myself for feeling hard done by.

Can you live on 1700 a month? Or do a lot of women return to work after a few months? I feel like I'm missing a trick here.

Flame away!

I took 4.5 months of my first and 5.5 off with my 2nd for exactly that reason :( the longer 2nd one was because he wouldn't take a bottle so had to be weaned). Remember you might have childcare costs to factor in when you do go back so technically you could try to manage on income less childcare at the moment and put that money away. With 2 13 months apart, we couldn't afford that so DH gave up full time work.

Definitely use this time to get your finances in order, but also research childcare costs for your town, here it's a grand a month for 8-6 care, if you need longer hours, you'll probably need a nanny that costs a lot more. It's not just the maternity leave that needs to be saved for.

(This is the reason when DH and i bought a house when I was pregnant -moving at 7months - we borrowed £100k less than the bank would lend us and picked a smaller house in a less desirable area because we knew my wage would be swallowed by childcare and we'd really struggle once the mat leave was over with a large mortgage)

I found similar. My DH is the higher earner but I was surprised by how much our income decreased by.

We were lucky that I could take the full 9 months by tightening our belts and living in some savings. Those last 3 months were very tricky though and I really struggled not having money of my own (as much as DH says use the joint account I hated not having my own money I'd earned myself)

I now work part time and all my wages go on bills etc. It has taken a long time for me to get used to not having my own disposable income but using joint money for treats.

It's also worth factoring in that if your job is a physical one where you are on your feet a lot of time, you might not make it to close to the due date before you have to go off, although you can use holiday leave before the baby comes if you have it.

I've taken a year off both times (SMP only for me)

We decimated our savings - £12k and also now owe £6k on credit cards will balance transfer and pay off within the year as I'm now back to work again

I'd do it again in a heartbeat - although we're not having more kids. With hindsight I could have saved a lot of money by doing things more cheaply (we bought everything new including toys and clothes. Our pram alone was £800!!!).

Our debt also includes a house move though - when I was 30w with DC2 and lots had to be bought new.... carpets, cooker, fridge, wardrobes

Another possible option is to see if you can get a job with an employer that pays enhanced maternity pay before you start ttc. Obviously that can be easier said than done and you'd probably need to be there a certain amount of time to become eligible before you get pregnant, so it might throw your timing out. However, it might be worth a thought.

Ask your mortgage provider if they wold give you a year on interest only.
I don't know if they do any more but they did for us and it really helped.
Ways we managed:

• I sold my car
• planned every meal and bought the shopping online. No impulse shelf buys.
• cancel the gym.
• cheaper phone contract

The first one is easy as you can save. The second one we found massively hard. But I will repeat what others have said, because there is absolutely no reason why you as the higher earner should not do this. Ask you DH to go to his work and enquire about shared parental leave. He is entitled to it by law. You could take 6 months, which a few years ago would have been all you had, then he can take 6 months.

Don't forget to factor in keeping in touch days and paid annual leave which continues to accrue in your absence and you can add it onto your mat leave but get paid for it. Otherwise we saved what we could while ttc and actually pregnant. We were 'fortunate' in one way that ttc took much longer than anticipated (I was diagnosed with pcos) so saved enough to take 10 months off.

We have only ever lived on one income.
We have never both worked full time at the same time.
The other was treated as windfall. It was used initially to overpay mortgage.

We had therefore a much lower standard of living than our friends in our twenties.
You cut your cloth accordingly.

My work is SMP only and taking a full year equals no job to go back to (not legal but that's the harsh reality). I'd love to be working for the NHS or to have the real choice of taking 12 months off!

DH will have to take most of the leave but SPL is rubbish compared to maternity so we will struggle big time. I do wonder if having a second DC was sensible but we really wanted another, both work, own a house, debt free apart from mortgage, and waited for DC1 to have the free hours of childcare .... I don't know how people with bigger families cope.

Your outgoings do change, no meals out for example. And as others have said you accrue annual leave whilst you're off which is really useful.

I found I could work part time but at nights weekends, thus reducing dramatically the need for childcare.
what you've never had you don't miss!
Could you convert part of mortgage to interest only? Or overpay now and then take a mortgage holiday?

I worked for the NHS for years through both my maternity leaves it does drop after six weeks from what i remember it went to 50% wages plus statuory maternity pay so i used to earn between £1800/1900/month it went down to about £1100/1200 /month after 26 weeks i think ordinary maternity pay ends and you just get statuory maternity pay which was about £125/week six years ago not sure what it is now? and then after nine months statuory maternity pay ends too so althougH you can stay off for a year you wont or couldnt get anything for the last three months.

Last time round I didn't plan and it was a massive shock to me too. This time round I've added to my savings, reduced my direct debits, planned ahead for birthday/christmas/christening etc and already bought the stuff and stored it. I'm going to get some M&S vouchers for the xmas shop next year and put them with the vouchers I got this Christmas. I'm also going to sell my car. I already Meal plan, shop at Lidl and Aldi, Batch cook etc. On a positive lots of stuff you go to with a new baby is cheep, the groups I found were either free or £2 - £3 to attend. Use your annual leave carefully and you can extend your mat leave with it. You'll be fine.

I wanted to take a year off but was signed off work at 28 weeks pregnant & when DS was 9months I was ready to go back, I lost a lot of confidence on maternity leave.

I am still breastfeeding at 16months - I pumped twice a day when I went back to work until he was 11months.

I did go back part time with full time holidays accrued over maternity leave so I feel like I haven't really been there much!

I got 4.5months full pay then SMP. I agree with others, I was actually better off on SMP not paying commuting costs, pension etc.

We had 4K saved up & spent it but I def could have been more careful.

Link to AfC maternity provisions, in case it is useful.

www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/pay-and-reward/nhs-terms-and-conditions/nhs-terms-and-conditions-of-service-handbook/parents-and-carers/maternity-leave-and-pay-section-15

Also worth pointing out that the new shared parental leave provisions mentioned by other posters allow you to share all but 2 weeks of your leave entitlement with your partner. So it may be worth him taking over e.g. when you drop down to statutory pay only (or even when your full pay ends).

I am in the same situation and as a result we have decided to wait 6 months before TTC so we can sort our finances and start building some savings as all our saving went on paying for our wedding in October. I felt put out by it at first and also annoyed with myself as like you I assumed we would manage but I'd rather wait a while and get ourselves in a better position so that we can afford for me to have a decent maternity leave.

Have a look at all your outgoing and see if there's anywhere you can cut back, I'm being much much more frugal with our spending now!!! Cutting down on take aways and meals out and not chucking random things in the trolley when doing a food shop!

Maternity leave is the easy bit, get DH to take his share. And when you go back to work either you choose to both work PT (if you think that you should both share the childcare hit to your careers) or DH should work PT/give up work depending on the finances.

Be aware that the £1k pcm for childcare is for one child and that childcare costs don't necessarily drop much when they start school. At 3 you get about £150 (maybe a bit less) off your monthly bill because of the 15 free hours, but wrap around care before and after school means childcare costs don't drop that much at 4, we pay £25 per child per day for wrap around care and the school holidays become more expensive because you need full daycare then.

Basically having children fucks your finances. At least you have savings and are thinking about it now.

I took the full year but used my keep in touch days to go back one day a week from 9 months onwards. You can do up to 10 days paid. It was great as it was a gentle introduction to work for me and a gentle introduction to childcare for my son. And it meant I never had a month of no pay at all.
I also felt that going to a childminder from 8 months old ( I took a month before he was born) was a good time for him as he was more accepting/ less clingy than he would have been at one year old.

Also remember you can start on a salary sacrifice childcare voucher scheme as soon as they are born so can start collecting vouchers and build up a lot of money x

Can dh take more of the time?

If you're the higher earner that probably means you have a more advanced career. A word of warning here: don't end up taking the career hit AND doing all the wife work. Now is the time to have very frank discussions with your partner on who will do what.
There is I think an almost inevitable larger burden on the mother at first if you breastfeed, but once you're through those initial few months of intense work, it's vital to get things distributed 50:50.
That does NOT mean you look after baby, do all the domestic stuff, cook, clean etc and he gets to have his career take of and put his feet up in the evenings. I see it like this : baby wrangling is a full time job. A job is s full time job. Chores get split between us.

Your post is very focuses on the sacrifices and hits you're going to take - what about dh?

The thing I can't understand is how people have 2? I would be £300 a month down if I went full time with 2 in nursery.

I just want to reiterate it's worth checking you've factored NHS OMP into your calculations, not just SMP. Assuming you've worked for the NHS for long enough to qualify, OMP is what you'll receive (8 weeks full pay, 18 weeks half pay + smp, 13 weeks smp only, 13 weeks unpaid).

I'll be taking 11 months maternity leave then using my accrued annual leave (which continues to accrue while you are on mat leave) to make up another month so I'll have around 12 months in total. We also have some savings to tide us over if needed. I also found on my last mat leave that I just naturally seemed to spend very little money compared to when I was working, which helped a lot!

Biggest hurdle for us, as others have identified, will be childcare costs once I go back to work.

We managed on just DH's salary, which take home was about 1400 per month, when I got unexpectedly pregnant. I'm a student so wasn't entitled to any maternity pay. Even now I'm back my entire loan and grant goes on travel and childcare, so we're still in pretty much the same position, thoughts salary has gone up. Basically you just take a massive lifestyle hit - we've pretty much had to stop going out to eat, certainly things we randomly used to do like deciding last minute to go away for a night, or go to the theatre/ cinema etc have gone out the window. We pretty much live on lentils and pasta and have had to stop running two cars. I do tutoring/ bank HCA work/ exam marking when I can to keep our heads above water. You just grit your teeth and keep telling yourself it's only temporary and will be worth it in the end as you now have a gorgeous small person. At least you know it will only be for a year and have a chance to save - we've been in this position for 18 months and we've still got two and a half years to go before I finish my course and start earning!